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Very recently (as in within the past couple of hours), I joined this social network/game called Empire Avenue (EA). It stemmed from being invited to this Facebook app/website called Klout, which some of you may be aware of. Unfortunately, I found out it was in violation of the UK Data Protection Act (granted, the posts are from November 2011, but Wikipedia hasn’t been updated to change the fact), so after I googled this little tidbit of information, I found out there were alternatives, such as PeerIndex (PI) (which I’ve also signed up to) and the aforementioned Empire Avenue. PeerIndex is nothing hugely special, apart from the fact it doesn’t violate the DPA and it’d based in the UK. However, it will suit my needs… not being able to change my username is a bit of a pain, but I’ll live. Anyway, PI basically links to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (as well as 2 others that I don’t have) profiles and analyses them to see what sort of influence, and the like you have. According to it (though it’s not finished analysing stuff), my Index is 43, which isn’t too far behind GOG at 50, which makes me wonder if I really have that much influence. Time will tell I guess.

Anyway, EA is very much the same sort of tool, but it offers more options to connect (such as Flickr, WordPress, YouTube, FourSquare, Google+ and the only one I don’t have, Instagram) as well as being able to link Facebook Pages, though it seems to be more FB Apps to be honest. Anyway, this brings me to the second part of the title, given PI and EA were both about getting social, and gauging my actual influence (as well as expanding my reach) within the networks I’m a part of, plus it is a great way of exposing yourself to new people, especially if you see yourself as a brand, which ties into the personal value mention above, but more on this later. Anyway, from what I gather, EA is a much expanded version of Klout and PI, and incorporates elements of Facebook in the sense you have what is a wall and status updates, plus you also have something that is a bit like Friends For Sale, which is what intrigues me the most about it, and reminds me about what Wilson Luna said about adding value, and also I believe he was saying you should set yourself up as a personal brand (he certainly suggested registering your name as a domain name!). Anyway, the way it works is that you invest shares in people, and from what I gather, like an actual share market, the shares appriciate and depreciate in value.
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Well, I’ve updated everything to the latest version now, although I think to the end user, nothing has really changed. I have plans to move this site to a new server in June so I can decrease my costs, and also implement my new integrated structure. This essentislly means I’ll be able to open up additional blogs in the same place, without having 20 million logins to remember as in many cases, consolidation/merging of things is the way to go, I’ve already done it with a few of my business ideas, although apart from the retail and security ideas I’ve been planning for the past while, most other things have been scaled back. Stormhaven Media’s website is being scaled back to a community portal now, as opposed to a business name; I’ve decided it’s best to merge my media and events company ideas into one cohesive plan, as there’s overlap between what they do. As for what this means for the DiggerFeast, not a hell of a lot… it’ll just be considered a hobby for the most part, with a couple business sensibilities under the hood.

What I will do instead now but will take me a bit is to have 2 30-40 min eps in a month as opposed to 1 60 min ep a month. This’ll mean I can split stuff up a bit, as an hour takes too long to show, although there will have to be editing in some cases so the shorter vid means less headaches. I plan to add closed captioning but I will likely need a while to implement it in an orderly fashion. Still, if I can get away with uploading vids without editing, I’ll be happy! Anyway, watch this space for updates as when I start fleshing my ideas more, they’ll start to appear with placeholders or have mentions on here. It’s gonna be pretty crazy now for the next while!

Okay folks, I apoligise for yet another gap in posting, as I’ve been busy yet again! I promise to get a little more up to date with things ASAP, but for now here’s a mini-post (relatively speaking) that covers something specific I’ve been working on the past couple of weeks! Additionally I’ve been working on my business es the past while, especially in the wake of the GAME issue, which has resolved itself somewhat now (I’ll have a post on that in the near future), though I do admit I took advantage of it. Anyway, just to briefly gloss over what I was doing a couple weekends ago (because I hope to write a more detailed post later on), I went to see this guy named Wilson Luna. For those of you not in the know, he’s an Australian bloke who happens to own 3 multi-million Dollar companies in Australia and does speaking and business mentoring, which he earns a lot of money for! Even the 2 day seminar I attended was worth £2,097 but I luckily got it for free! I’ll explain in later post as it’s not important right now. What is important however is the 10 rules he had dotted about the room; I’m going to list them, then add some notes to indicate how I learnt how they have affected my way of thinking, or how I’ve seen them at work, at least in life. As far as business goes, I haven’t quite seen that in effect just yet, but then the work/life balance is a load of crap anyway!

This may be one of my shortest posts, but by god it’ll be one of the more insightful ones I’ve written! I might actually revisit the rules down the line  with additional interpretations, because while I’m operating at a different level to most  people, I am but a Padawan right now (obligatry geeky reference … so without further ado, let’s start:

1. Only 1 CEO
Okay, what I learnt here is that I’m in charge of my own life (but not fully my own destiny – I’ll get to this later), so I should make my own decisions and decide the effect they have on me. No one else is fully responsible for the decisions I make and though they can give me advice/suggestions, it’s ultimately down to me what I do.

2. No baggage
This one basically means leaving my emotional state and preconceptions at the door, tho do things without bias, as bias will mean I make poor decisions, be it through positive or negative emotion, I will still make a bad decision, so it’s important to have emotional state that while positive, does not lean into the realm where it causes me to make a bad decision; this is mostly for business,  although the life lesson here is to go in with an open mind.

3. If you’re in, you’re in
This one is a fun one! It means when you’re committed to a decision and have made a path to your goal, you stick with it till the end. That said however, you can change your path along the way if circumstances dictate, for as a story character of mine once said, “without a plan of action there’s no way to account for any variables in battle”. Point being, nothing in life ever goes to plan, so even if you’re committed to a goal, you may be required to change your plans to ultimately see it through. If you’re really lucky, you may either find a better way to get there (due to circumstances coming into play), or you can come back and cover the ground you had to skip the first time around, provided it’s still feasible to do, so don’t worry about missing a few stops, there’s always time to make good on things later!

4. Participation = Value
This is an easy one and in some ways ties into the above. Once you participate, you get value out of it, regardless of the outcome. The reason you get value from it is because you learnt as you went along and experienced it; you do not get real experience through staying still and watching… you must do it yourself, for good or bad, as even if it does turn out badly, you have learnt something.

5. Action = Rewards
This too, extolls the virtues of actually doing something. By taking action, you are rewarded… be it through experience or the outcome you hope for. Ultimately, this lesson teaches you to occasionally take risks and/or go out of your comfort zone because ultimately it could pay off!

6. How you do one thing is how you do everything
This one is rather obvious, though it reflects upon you as a person; essentially, if you run away from one thing, you’ll be constantly be running from everything… so instead of running, stand your ground and/or get stuck in!

7. Focus on you
There’s nothing wrong with being selfish from time to time, as if you don’t focus on yourself, how can you focus on others? Additionally, focusing on yourself allows you to see your strengths (and weaknesses) and shows you how you can put them to use best, which ultimately will help people out in the long run.

8. Trust the process
This is one I’ve learnt today, and thus has become a favourite. I’ll go into this after I’m finished the list, but suffice it to say this means that you need to put more trust in the universe, in the sense that eventually you’ll get to where you need to go (provided you take action). Occasionally this might mean trusting someone to help you reach your goal, other times this might mean you just let things work themselves out and continue the course; things don’t happen right away, so even though it may not look like things are going your way right now, have a little more faith and let things happen as you go along your path… you’ll be pleased with the results if you stick to it!

9. G.O.I (Get Over It)
If’s and but’s, we all have them… they cause us to hesitate or stall and sometimes, they cause us to question people/things, even though they know what they’re doing. I’ve been guilty of this quite a few times (if you’re reading this, sorry JD) because I failed to trust the process, simply because of my uncertainty with things. It’s not important that I know if they work or not at the start; what’s important is you drop your preconceptions and go with it (rules 4 & 5) and note the results as you go along, as you’ll find things will work!

10. Just for fun!
This is an easy one… try not to take things too seriously, and if you have a failure, so what? Get Over It! Close the board and start a new game! You have plenty of chances to, plus you learn as much (if not more) from losing something as you do winning. Sometimes things don’t work out, and that’s cool… they’re not always supposed to work out, because you have lessons to learn and these lessons help you to win games in the future.

You might have noticed that my interpretations feed into each other… that’s understandable given that the rules themselves feed into each other, although everyone interprets them differently, and each rule is interpreted at a different level to another person, although there are only so many levels to get for each.

Anyway, regarding why Rule 8 is my favourite at present is that before I flew off to America last year, I had a package delivered. Unfortunately, at the time I was unable to get it so had to fly off to America without picking it up. Anyway, things in America never went to plan, as some of my readers/friends know so basically when it came to recovering it after I came home, it became ‘lost’. It was never returned to the seller, so I pretty much lost faith in ever seeing it again. Now yesterday I got a pickup note for my last 2 eBay orders to be picked up from the deliery office, and the postman mentioned that there were 3 packages waiting for me, which I did think was a little odd at the time, as I had only ordered two. Anyway, I had a random thought of my long-lost order reappearing again, and when I came to pick up my packages (walking through the rain to get there, which felt like it took ages!), I saw the 2 parcels on top of another one at the bottom. Naturally, I had no knowledge of this parcel as my orders were complete at this point; I opened up the package and saw what was in it… it was my missing order!

I then looked at the package more closely as I realised what it was, and at that point, my mood picked up immensely, so much so I just pulled down my hood and let the rain hit me as I felt great, and hell… the trip home felt a lot quicker than it was! I now have one more thread of last year resolved, so I just have one more thing I have to sort out and everything is finally sorted from last year, meaning everything will be back to how it was in terms of my disadvantage, though I’ve learnt a lot along the way.

Ultimately though, the experience taught me to have faith in things and trust the process!

Thanks for reading.

So yeah, been no updates for ages, sorry about that! Even then, this isn’t a proper update, more to let people know I’m still alive (though I imagine some people won’t be happy at that) and that I restored the domain, which went down for about a day. I’m still getting stuff in order, and hope that over the next few months, I’ll be simplifying a lot of my websites, even here. As it stands, I’ve been doing some reshuffling though I won’t bore people with the details… however, I do eventually want to maybe get a retro games post out soon. I’ve been playing about in YouTube as well, uploading a few videos to do with the DiggerFeast (which has about 4 episodes with outtakes I have to edit) and also a test with my C64 and my Wii on my USB composite (red, white and yellow )  cable. I have plans as well to check out my PS2, SNES (with Super Game Boy) and recently aquired Gamecube (with Gameboy Player) and Dreamcast systems to see how well they record. Unfortunately, the C64 has a few recording issues, such as some artifacts on the top of the screen when I use the composite mode to connect it via my composite splitter. if I use S-Video to link it up, the screen is clear, but it’s in grayscale instead… very frustrating! I’m hoping with the addition of my new SCART stuff, I should be able to hook up the C64 through the SCART port, then route the picture out through S-Video… well, that’s the plan anyway!

I have a successful Wii recording, so that means I’ll be able to play both GameCube and Wii games with ease and record if needed. I do need to give the other systems a test-through as well, through composite, though my PS3 will be though component, and even nicer is the fact that because I ordered a HDMI to component splitter to use with the PS3, I won’t need to fiddle about with the settings, although on the flip side, I do have a PS2/PS3/Wii/Xbox 360 component cable if I really need it, which is always handy to have, especially as it means I can record everything in higher definition if needs be, although PS1 games seem to refuse to run on my PS2 when it’s in composite mode, oh well…. there is always the PS3 for that.

Anyway, all things considered, when I’m done, I hope to be able to record PC (both native and emulated), PS1/2/3 (PS2 & PS3), Wii/GameCube /Game Boy Advance/GB Colour/GB Classic (Wii & GameCube w/ GB Player), SNES/GB Colour/Classic (SNES with Super Game Boy), C64 (Tape & Disk and Cart – if I can afford them!) and Dreamcast games for the purposes of review, and also demonstrations. I do also have access to a 360 via my friends if I really need to use that, meaning I can use Xbox 360 and also most classic Xbox games too. Either way, with things well under way, I hope to see some great progress made this year… although I do need to buy some extra cables too, I think… I’m not using my own personal cables on a ‘work’ game system as it means both more weight to carry, plus they’d be potentially be exposed to more damage. Anyway, I’ll try to update more over the coming weeks to show off more of my stuff.. and rest assured, the DiggerCast and DiggerFeast will be getting updates soon, along with other sites!

Okay, I promise to keep this update shortish and to the point.  Essentially, this is mostly centred around my 50 Things page and also around the future of this site.  Firstly, I’ve decided that for the likes of the books and movies entries, I’m just going to round up/down to the nearest full unit of 5, for simplicity, though the individual numbers will still be accurate.  Secondly, I’m starting to make plans for a London to New Zealand (via Hong Kong, Japan and Australia) trip using only trains and ships/ferries.  I shall also be doing this with at least 2 friends and although it’s a Xeno Storm project, it will be done in conjunction with Stormhaven Media, where we will have a special blog dedicated to our travels of a team.  Essentially, there shall be episodes that we upload to the show blog (along with other notes), and also as an extra, we shall have our own personal blogs so you can see stuff from our perspective.  There will also be a mirror blog which replicates the content on the show blog, as my plans at present are to have a show blog for use on the Stormhaven Media site, then a blog on the Xeno Storm site, so there’s a bit of crossover between the two sites.

This crossover system will be in place elsewhere too, but this is the most obvious (and perhaps simplest) example of its use.  Additionally, in order to somplify things, Stormkeeper dot Net will be moving to a unified system within the Xeno Storm Blogsite.  Granted, I may have said this before, but it’s worth saying again, for various reasons.  First of all, the reason why I’m doing this is to save myself a bit of space, though less logins to remember is another factor as well.  The other thing about it is that I’ll be linking the blog (and a wiki) to the forums, which will mean a single sign on for everything, which makes things a lot easier in the long run.  Additionally, I’ll also be looking at putting an addon that ties in domains to a WordPress account, which means very little overall will change, though in the early days, I may use my other personal domain to test things out while maintaining this concurrently.

Eventually though, I’ll be moving the blo over, and pointing my other personal domain to Stormkeeper dot Net.  I will also be removing all the games related tags (that I haven’t used) and the projects tags, though the games-related posts will stay put.  The reason for this is that my games blog is now going to be elsewhere, albeit temporarily, but games related posts will mostly be there now, unless there’s crossover.  The projects will be moved to a dedicated projects blog, along with the majority of my portfolio as well, which will free up space on my personal blog to do more personal stuff.  But yeah, there shall be a lot of reshuffling.  Additionally, I will have my own travel blog, which will both detail my mini and personal trips, but also will deal with my side of a team trips.  My projects blog will deal only with my own personal projects and tutorials, with my “travel blog” (which will probably get renamed) also handling my part of team projects, so I need to give a rethink of the blogs being called travel blogs.  Additionally, I think my projects blog may be more of a portfolio than anything else, so I may just rename it to that instead.  Even if it is a single sign in system, I still don’t want blogs all over the place, so will have to give stuff serious thought!

As well as domains though, I hope to use subdomains, but more on that later, once I’ve gotten a handle on things.  The first thing I intend to put up for XS is the forums, just so I can start getting stuff ready to deploy.  The next things I’ll be putting up are the FSIRC forums and also the pilot episode of the DiggerFeast and while not strictly XS related, there is some connection.  Either way though, I have a lot of plans for XS and will hope to carry them out this month, thus makingmy life a bit simpler.  I do feel I should inform people that I need to deploy ads on my blogs now as well, to help pay for server costs.  They were planned for any forums I run, but the blogs until now had remained ad free.  This will change over the next couple of months, though I’ll assure my readers that the ads won’t be intrusive or be the least intrusive out there.  Either way, these ads will help keep my sites active, or at least allow me to expand my operations.  I do have other plans for revenue generation as well, but they might apply more to my other websites more than here, possibly.

I’ll leave it at that for now.  Watch this space for details as to updates with this site, and also when the XS forums will be relaunched!

Between looking at my blog, and also the email asking why I haven’t updated, I’m now very much aware that I kinda disappeared for the past 4 months! Unfortunately my first trip to the USA wasn’t really all that good on the whole, but I did have a few nice moments and while it wasn’t all gloom and doom, I ended up having to write it off. Still, I’m better prepared for when I next go there. Anyway, because of all my hiccups across the pond, I was unable to do any episodes of the DiggerFeast like I planned, especially given the aftermath I was trawling through right up till late last month. However, I have at least managed to make preparations for a pilot episode, though whether I am doing it solo or with others is currently dependent upon whatever happens over the coming weeks. The DiggerCast was subject to a similar fate, but rest assured, now that I’m back home, and in (somewhat) of a right mind, I can continue the DiggerFeast and DiggerCast soon.

However, given that I’m going forward with my Stormhaven Media idea, it is very likely you won’t see a DiggerFeast episode for a few weeks, at least till I get the blog setup there. As for the DiggerCast, expect a new episode in the middle of October. Why then, you say? Well, the idea is to release eps every first and third week(end) and I need to focus on getting the team back together, as well as a couple new additions, plus given I haven’t worked on it for a while, I need to update the site list and also setup a page template! Rest assured though, the final format is nailed, and thus is the most complete show. Coincidentally, the DiggerFeast will likely follow a similar skeleton framework, for the reasons of consistancy at least. I am wondering at present as well if it’s a good idea to put everything in a single blog, although that said, WordPress is powerful enough to be modded for multiple purposes, so I think it would be the best option, in all fairness, especially once I learnt how to sort the domain stuff out. I’ll think of something eventually.

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I’m just showing people a possible look for the reviews system on Gamed Up, although admittedly, I think I have an idea as to how I’ll be changing the images…

What's the score?
Presentation
How the game itself is presented, i.e. the story, plot, design, and the ideas the developer was trying to convey. Also covers how well everything is implemented.
Audio
Covers sound and music.
Visuals
How everything in the game looks.
Gameplay
How the game is to play, such as the controls and how everything interacts together, as well as how fun it is to actually play.
Value
Is the game worth buying at its current price? Also, will you be able to play the game again or is it basically going to be thrown away after completion?
Overall
This is the overall score of the game, which is NOT calculated by average

Here is a list of the descriptions of each score as well, to quantify the numbers in words:

0 – Non-existant (Features*) / Don’t bother (Overall)
1 – Terrible
2 – Awful
3 – Bad
4 – Below Average
5 – Average
6 – Above Average
7 – Good
8 – Very Good
9 – Excellent
10 – Outstanding (Features*) / Must-Buy (Overall)

* Features is defined as Presentation, Gameplay, Audio, Visuals and Value.

I just thought that I’d announce that I’ve knocked off 2 movies from the IMDB top 250: The Kings Speech and Inception.  Granted, I haven’t seen all of The Kings Speech, but it’s enough to say I watched it all the same.  I shall be finishing it off on my way back home, or I’ll watch it after I get home.  Suffice it to say, at least I’m making progress somewhere  I have also updated other parts to reflect my goals being even closer, such as the wolf one and the company one.

Warning: This post contains some mild profanity.

This is just an short update while I work on my main post (which should be out over the next couple of days), but there’s an article over on ZDNet which  essentially states that the 3D TV “revolution” is a waste of time!  I could have said that ages ago, but yeah… 3D TV is totally pointless.  I’m actually even wondering if the 3DS might be a bit giimmicky, but I’m gonna let it slide for now.  3D TV itself is rather pointless as a technology, but then the companies seem to expect (or rather hope) that we’ll spend money on a technology that at present is nothing more than a gimmick, especially when we’re barely taking advantage of HD at present!  Yes, I’m all for innovation and all that, but honestly, 3D TV is pretty much just a fad at present and I don’t see it becoming any more than that considering we’re still trying to get used to HD, which as of yet still isn’t a standard technology.  The ZDNet article implied that instead of adding a new gimmick to TVs, they should focus on making HD TVs more affordable and available to the masses.  And given in the UK there’s a Digital Switchover planned over the next couple years, I do think this is more important.  Admittedly though, where I live has no digital coverage at all, and only poor analogue coverage… I wish that were sorted out.  So, instead of fixing present tech, people seem more focused on “The Next Big Thing”, even though in this case, what’s being touted as such is just a gimmick.

Okay, maybe I should go back to the 3DS; I had a chance to play one for a little while, both at the airport before flying to the States and also in a local Walmart, so I am at least reasonably well informed about the 3DS.  I have also glanced at the 3DS Wikipedia article, and while I’m intrigued by the majority of the 3DS’s specs, I’m still not 100% sure about the 3D aspect.  Even more amusing is the fact that the cameras haven’t even been upgraded from the 0.3MP!  It’s not like I’m expecting something like 16MP with the cameras, but the least they could do is increase the sensors to 1 or 2MP; those are cheap enough to at least provide decent resolution on a larger monitor; consider the fact that the SD Card can be used elsewhere, like for printing pictures to paper… also consider that a picture resolution that is over 3-6 times larger than the camera of the DSi, which means sharper pictures.  There has already been comments (based on what has been said in the article) that 3D versions of movies look worse than their 2D counterparts, but then again that is to be expected given the way the films were initially filmed.  I suppose though, to give Nintendo its due, it did at least stick 2 camera sensors on the front so the 3D effect would probably look better than what you see in the movies.  Ironically, I was actually thinking Anaglyph 3D was cool (and still do to an extent), but I really don’t know how 3D adds to movies… sure, it looks good with a still image, but when it’s done with an entire movie, it starts to lose its appeal.
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I’m totally aware it’s been almost 3 months since my last blog entry.  I keep on forgetting to update the blog, although admittedly, I do have a couple expansions planned for this very blog.  First of all, I’m gonna be setting up a travel blog in anticipation of my 2 months in America, which will also (hopefully) have accompanying vids and pics.  I’m also planning a projects blog and a few other things, although they’re very slow in coming.  And I’m totally aware I’m supposed to be doing that Pocket Games video… I haven’t forgot at all, it’s just that it’s very hard organising a weekend of filming with friends at times, given when we finally do meet, we usually end up going out, but I haven’t forgotten!  There’s also the fact that a few unexpected circumstances occurred, which didn’t help things either.  If needs be, I’ll do it when I’m in America!  Other than that though, a new DiggerCast episode is up, with another to come in 2 weeks, and hopefully a pilot of a show called the DiggerFeast.  I’ll update with more details later on as this is more a post to say I’m still around, and I’ll write something more substantial than just tweets soon.